{"id":61956,"date":"2016-12-31T15:41:11","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T22:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=61956"},"modified":"2016-12-31T15:41:11","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T22:41:11","slug":"the-angoda-mental-hospital-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/12\/31\/the-angoda-mental-hospital-case\/","title":{"rendered":"The Angoda mental hospital case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

December 31, 2016, 6:57 pm<\/span>
\nIt was perhaps supremely fitting that we ended 2016 with a scandal involving a key cabinet minister and the Angoda mental hospital. This scandal became public for the first time due to a video posted on SlVlog.com by journalist Darshana Handungoda who explained the whole sordid episode in great detail with a powerful cabinet minister, his valet who got involved with a beautiful Korean woman, ending up with six electric shocks administered to the unfortunate valet\u2019s head in the Angoda mental hospital.\u00a0 This video can be viewed on the following link – https:\/\/youtu.be\/RLC7YGJb1Oo. We watched it and then forgot about it because the story was too Hollywood-like to believe. Such things can\u2019t happen in real life was what we thought. Then last Thursday, the aggrieved valet appeared in person at a press conference with an affidavit attested by Commissioner of Oaths Mahanama Dissanayake dated 15 December 2016.<\/p>\n

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What the valet said at that press conference can be viewed on the following link https:\/\/youtu.be\/Bzzjyw9KHrM. According to the contents of his affidavit, the name of this aggrieved valet is Harshsa Bandara Thilakasiri. He claimed to be an executive chef by profession who had got involved with the Anti-terrorism movement in the 1990s, and worked with Minister Champika Ranawaka for the past 16 years. He had been on Ranawaka\u2019s ministerial personal staff for the past ten years in all the ministries that he had held from 2007 up to now. He had also been the executive chef of Water\u2019s Edge hotel (no less) and the menial work he did for Ranawaka was obviously due to his allegiance to the cause. His task had been that of a personal valet, cooking for Ranawaka, washing and iroing his clothes and even massaging the Hon. Minister!<\/p>\n

The long and short of the story is that this executive chef turned valet who also apparently speaks Korean got involved with an attractive Korean lady and a certain ministerial one had wanted to have fun with this lady which request the valet had refused and this led to a whole chain of events resulting in the valet falling out with the minister, leaving his service and then being literally abducted by the minister\u2019s security guards and henchmen and taken to the Angoda mental hospital where he had been given electric shock treatment.<\/p>\n

The fact that a minister and his valet fell out over a woman is not unusual \u2013 men do quarrel over women and even if a minister in heat tried to pressurize his employee to yield up his girlfriend to him and actually came to blows over the lady, that too is not unusual. But what is unusual is what is said to have gone on at the Angoda mental hospital. This Harshsa Bandara Thilakasiri in his affidavit claims to have been taken to the Angoda mental hospital on 10 September 2016 by a group comprising of a police officer called SI Herath, two other police officers, one Chandana Ranasinghe who is supposed to be a working director of the UDA and one Pradeep Alwis described as a driver of Champika Ranawaka.\u00a0\u00a0 Tilakasiri says that he was kept in Ward No: 5 bearing Ticket No 5521\/16 and that on the day he was warded, no patient in his ward had been permitted to receive visitors.<\/p>\n

The next day, when his brother Lankendra Tilakasiri and a journalist by the name of Shantha Wijesuriya had arrived at the hospital they had not been allowed to see him. From the third day onwards, Tilakasiri claims to have been given electric shocks as treatment. The consultant psychiatrist treating him has been named in the affidavit as Dr Jayan Mendis. Tilakasiri claims that when he had asked this doctor to allow him to go home, the latter had refused to allow him to leave as he was not yet \u2018cured\u2019. Tilaksiri says that though the patient profile states that he had a history of mental disturbance twenty years ago and once again in 2013, that is false.\u00a0 If there is any truth at all in what Tilakasiri claims to have gone on at the Angoda mental hospital, this is the worst medical scandal to ever to come to light in this country.<\/p>\n

Tilakasiri\u2019s affidavit reads like a Hollywood film script with evil doctors waiting to do the bidding of conspiratorial politicians and declare perfectly same people to be insane. We have read of perfectly sane people being confined to lunatic asylums by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. Hollywood has also produced some blockbusters including a fairly recent one starring Leonardo di Caprio where you have evil mental hospital administrators who seem only too willing to keep sane people in captivity and treat them for mental illnesses they don\u2019t have. After this story hit the fan last week members of the medical profession were reeling in shock that such a thing could take place in real life in this country. Of course we have to be careful in this because just because someone says something even in a sworn affidavit it does not mean the story is true. We have a long history of false affidavits especially in relation to people in politics.<\/p>\n

The Sri Lanka Medical Council should look into this matter very seriously and ascertain 1) whether an individual called Harsha Bandara Tilakasiri was admitted to the Angoda mental hospital, 2) who had brought this individual to be admitted 3) if those accompanying him were not his next of kin, who had accepted the patient 4) the psychiatrist who had first examined the supposed patient and decided that he was indeed mentally ill 5) whether the hospital inquired from the patient or tried to get the police to trace his next of kin before administering advanced treatment like electric shocks etc etc.<\/p>\n

Insanity outside Angoda<\/p>\n

In the meantime, things were not much different inside or outside the Angoda mental hospital. The exchanges between the the UNP and the SLFP (Sirisena faction) became shriller as the year came to a close. Usually, the run up to Christmas and the following days up to the dawn of the New Year and about two weeks into the New Year is a lean period for the media with most politicians out of the country and everybody taking a long break from work and infighting. But this year, we have reached the end of the year with no diminution in the sound and fury of the political give and take. Even the ministers who have gone abroad continued to make noises even in their absence.\u00a0 The almost daily exchange of recriminations and insults between the UNP and the SLFP continued last week as well with the UNP going on the offensive and responding more forcefully to the jibes and brickbats of their SLFP colleagues.<\/p>\n

Last week Ministers Mano Ganesan and P.Digambaram holding a joint press conference told the SLFP group to leave the government if they are not happy. Then three UNP backbenchers including parliamentarian Nalin Bandara held a press conference at Sirikotha and said much the same thing. UNP parliamentarian Mujibur Rahaman wrote a letter to the President saying that the Presidential Media Unit has been carrying out chauvinistic propaganda.\u00a0 What he meant by this was that the statements that had been made about the Muslim people and Islam by Galagodaatte Gananasara during a meeting with President Sirisena had been circulated to the media by the Presidential media division. Rahaman had taken exception to the allegation made by Gnanasara to the effect that Islam teaches Muslims to destroy places of historical value. Last week, Dilan Perera, the official spokesman of the SLFP once again lashed out at the UNP on the Sirasa Newsline programme.<\/p>\n

All this took place in the backdrop of resounding and embarrassing defeats for the UNP\u2019s Development Special Provisions Bill in all the SLFP controlled provincial councils with the Joint Opposition and the SLFP government group as well as the JVP joining hands to defeat it. Unless the president had specifically instructed the chief ministers to oppose the Bill they would not have thrown their weight behind the Joint Opposition and the JVP. Yet this Bill had been approved by cabinet which is headed by the President. In fact after helping to defeat this Bill in the Western Provincial Council, Chief Minister Isura Devapriya told the media that it was the SLFP that was the decisive group in the government and not the UNP.<\/p>\n

He crowed that since the Development Special Provisions Bill had been defeated in the Provincial Councils the only way to get it passed would be with a two thirds majority in Parliament and that too was not possible because the SLFP held the balance in parliament as well. This showed the President\u2019s ability to throw the spanner in the works using the SLFP rump that supports him. There is a very thinly disguised attempt on the part of the SLFP group in parliament to masquerade as the opposition to the UNP because that is the only way they have any prospects of being able to survive the local government elections. Because of the SLFP (Sirisena Group\u2019s), attempt to outdo the Joint Opposition in opposing the UNP, the UNP has been left holding the short end of the stick which is doing them untold damage among the floating voters. They were left with egg on their faces on the bond issue, and now again with the repeated defeat of the Development Special Provisions Bill in the SLFP controlled PCs.<\/p>\n

It is just as well that the UNP has begun hitting back. This has been having some effect because every time the UNP reminds the public that it is they who made Sirisena President, the SLFP group in the government loses face. It can be seen that despite President Sirisena\u2019s encouragement of the attacks on the UNP, only a handful of SLFP members like Dilan Perera and Chief Minister Isura Devapriya have been condemning the UNP, while the majority of the SLFP ministers serving in the government have kept quiet. \u00a0Even S.B.Dissanayake has not really been attacking the UNP though he did make some offhand comments saying that the SLFP cannot continue for ever in partnership with the UNP and that there are difficulties in running a government in this manner. He is just telling the truth, without any undue criticism of the UNP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island December 31, 2016, 6:57 pm It was perhaps supremely fitting that we ended 2016 with a scandal involving a key cabinet minister and the Angoda mental hospital. This scandal became public for the first time due to a video posted on SlVlog.com by journalist Darshana Handungoda who explained the whole sordid episode […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-106"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}